The Long March, 1934

The Long March in short was basically a retreat undertaken by the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang. Mao led his Red Army on a 9,000 km retreat across much of China. without the dedication of the people in the Red Army, the Chinese communist Party would have collapsed. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. Only 8,000 to 9,000 survived the trek, which ended in the establishment of a new Communist base in Yan'an. The Long March became the central event in Chinese revolutionary mythology. It became a metaphor for the revolution itself.

Summary

Eventually they settled in the North (Shensi) where he formed the Yenan Soviet. The Chinese Communist party began to gain support and power due to their resistance against the Japanese army while the kuomintang were to worried about fighting against the CCM. The Long March began the ascent to power of Mao Zedong, whose leadership during the retreat gained him the support of the members of the party. The bitter struggles of the Long March would come to represent a significant episode in the history of the Communist Party of China, and would seal the personal prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.